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The publication deals with Muslim migrant groups from African countries and their attitudes towards the rule of law, culture and religion.

In its latest study entitled ‘Between the rule of law, culture and religion’, the Documentation Centre Political Islam (DPI) focuses on Muslim communities from various parts of sub-Saharan Africa living in the greater Vienna area. According to Statistics Austria, of the 64,500 people born in an African country and living in Austria as of 1 January 2024, 8,694 come from Somalia, 935 from Sudan (including South Sudan) and 12,876 from West Africa. The quantitative study was carried out by the two Africanists Erwin Ebermann and Martina Gajdos. The analysis was based on interviews with over 300 respondents from Vienna and the surrounding area, who answered questions about their lifestyle, values, beliefs and behavioural preferences.

Women are more open than men when it comes to practising their religion and other areas

Around half of the interviewed Muslims with a West African, Somali or Sudanese background can be classified as religiously tolerant (48.7 per cent), while around a third (32.8 per cent) exhibit at least some discriminatory attitudes towards people with other religious beliefs. Around one in ten respondents of Sudanese (11.1 per cent) or West African (7.5 per cent) origin feel superior to members of another faith; this proportion is higher among believers from Somalia (56.1 per cent). Women are significantly more open (56.9 per cent) than men (42.9 per cent). Quran lessons are more important to the majority than school lessons (52.3 per cent), although this view is held significantly more often by male interviewees (63.3 per cent) than by female interviewees (38.3 per cent). 52.8 per cent of women are in favour of a Muslim woman choosing her own husband, but only 36.6 per cent of men. That women should appear confident in public is supported by 68.5 per cent of female respondents and 41.7 per cent of male respondents.

In the interviews, more than half (53.3 per cent) were in favour of equal rights for women in all areas of life. More than a quarter of the group from Somalia (25.2 per cent) were in favour of a Muslim woman never refusing to have sex with her husband, while respondents from Sudan (7 per cent) or West Africa (8 per cent) were much less likely to be in favour of this. Male approval (17.1 per cent) is roughly twice as high as among the female interviewees (9.4 per cent). "A key finding of the DPI study is that women often adopt a far more open and tolerant attitude on many issues. Women can therefore play an important role in successful social integration and overcoming religious extremist tendencies,’ says Lisa Fellhofer, Director of the Documentation Centre.

Segregation and a lack of German language skills favour rights violations

The survey also shows that when there is an individual tendency towards segregation from the majority society and a lack of knowledge of German - and particularly when there is a combination of both phenomena - the approval and acceptance of violations of the law increases significantly. On the other hand, it has been shown that knowledge of the German language not only goes hand in hand with a greater willingness to integrate, but also significantly increases the chances of participation in all areas. This in turn is reflected in greater approval of a pluralistic society and its values as well as the Western-style constitutional state.
 

The majority of respondents (55.6 per cent) appreciate the advantages of a pluralistic society based on the basic principle of ‘live and let live’; slightly less than a quarter (24.7 per cent) have a negative or intolerant attitude towards this form of society. ‘Good German language skills and more intensive dialogue with the majority society are extremely important for arriving in Austria. Both help to reduce one's own prejudices and to recognise and seize opportunities for participation, which a society must also offer,’ emphasise the two authors of the study, Erwin Ebermann and Martina Gajdos.

Zwischen Rechtsstaat, Kultur und Religion